Armonk calls out, “Dr. Varik? Are you here? What’s going on?”
Thorn ventures into the doctor’s adjoining office. He returns, tugging at my arm, new tears blotting his eyes. In there, someone has thrown Dr. Varik’s holo files across the table, their diamond and octagonal jewel shapes spilled for the poaching. Whoever was here didn’t want these files, though who knows how many others are missing. His monitor’s still on, and when Armonk presses return, it blinks alive, onto a medical report.
I read it out loud. “Subjects display chimeric aspects upon testing. The variety of symptoms and transgenic response is stunning. Subjects have less need for food and more for photosynthesis. Each displays weight loss and heightened energy, with the blood thinning and mixing with sap. Unlike my side effect of the plants throwing off new roots, subjects Ruby and Thorn are each self-contained in one plant chimera, having no root system.”
“Chimera,” Blane says as he clenches and unclenches his jaw. “A genetic splicing of two very different beings.” His brows shoot up as he turns toward me. “That’s you!” he exclaims. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I … I guess I was scared to.”
A glint of satisfaction plays on Armonk’s face, no doubt because unlike Blane, I trusted Armonk with my secret the whole time.
Armonk continues reading where I left off. “Each form of mutation or contamination, if you will, foments a different variety of chimera. This is an improvement on my transgenesis, as in my case, the need to cut off constant new growths has been a source of pain and embarrassment, and has rendered my skin a woody texture that must be treated with special—”
“So the doctor’s part Fireseed too?” Blane murmurs. “This just gets more bizarre.”
“I knew it,” I blurt. “I saw those nubs.”
“We need to find him,” Armonk interrupts. “We’ll talk about the details later.”
“You’re right.” I scan the room for a clue to the doctor’s whereabouts.
Thorn has run off again. We find him pounding on the door to the operating suite.
Armonk puts his ear to the door and wriggles the latch. “The doctor never locks the inside doors. Dr. Varik,” he calls, then louder, “Dr. Varik, if you’re in there open up!”
I hear a faint groan, but wonder if it’s an echo off of the slick office walls. “Did you hear someone?” Blane and Armonk shake their heads so I keep searching.
Thorn tries the doorknob again. “Smell,” he exclaims.
Putting my nose to the crack under the door, I breathe in. “Ack! Stinks of stale potatoes but much more raunchy.” After another inhale my stomach quivers with a profound nausea.
Blane searches for a tool to pry open the lock. He finds one of Dr. Varik’s surgical tools—a curved metal blade with a narrow hooked tip, which does the trick—that, and a determined kick. On the operating suite table, our worst fears are realized.
A horrible yet strangely exotic sight lies before us. Someone has secured Dr. Varik to the surgical table with his own belts, and springing from his grey, decaying flesh are tall sprays of gorgeous red star-shaped flowers. They bloom from his chest, his forehead and his stomach. Smaller, curlicue fronds unfurl from his upturned arms. One single stalk with a crimson flower head rises from his mouth in a lyrical, triumphant arc.
Armonk approaches the doctor and checks for a pulse. “He’s gone.” With that, tears begin to slide down his cheekbones.
“The flower roots must’ve invaded his organs,” Blane says.
I gag and swallow. That reality is overwhelming. Those few times that I studied the doctor’s exposed skin and noticed stubs now flood back to me in lurid detail. He was shaving these blooms off. He’s hidden this horror from us, and now whoever secured him here and robbed him of his dignity and life, has released Varik’s secret to the world.
Varik truly was Fireseed One—the first transgenic variety of the species.
Tears spill from my eyes and onto Thorn’s head as we hug each other. Terror seizes me too. I know that the doctor said my transmutation was different than his but … I glance down at my arms. What if he was wrong? I hear Armonk, now crying in gasps, and Blane is frozen in place, still staring at the sight.
When I finally creep over toward the body, I’m afraid to touch it. I’m one and the same, though I’m supposedly a different breed.
“Is it catching, Ruby?” Blane whispers as he inches closer.
“No.” I will myself to believe this. The doctor has to be right. “If it was that easy to get, all of the kids at The Greening would have come down with it.”
“How did you catch it then?” Blane asks with a frown, as if it’s a plague.